Comedy has always been dominated by white, heterosexual males. Los Angeles-based standup comedian Cameron Esposito isn’t okay with that.

Dubbed by Jay Leno as “the future of comedy,” Esposito is primarily known for her personal material, much of which is influenced by her exploration of her own sexuality. Her second album, “Same Sex Symbol” came out last year to critical acclaim. Currently, she’s on tour, debuting material from her forthcoming album.

Still, she’s committed to quite a few projects right now, proving that she’s about as L.A. as you can get. In addition to doing stand-up, though, she hosts two podcasts: “Put Your Hands Together,” which is the podcast version of her stand-up showcase, and “Wham Bam Pow,” which is about science fiction and action movies. She writes an AV Club column that’s on hiatus, but she’s currently working on a book. Student Life caught up with her about her work before her upcoming performance in St. Louis on Friday.

Student Life: You did improv throughout college, starting your sophomore year. Later, though, you started focusing primarily on stand-up. How did doing improv in college affect your future in comedy as a stand-up comedian?

Cameron Esposito: I started [doing improv] at Boston College when I was 19. So, I got into stand-up already knowing how to take up space onstage and how to react in the moment to what was going on, and both of those were invaluable. Both were skills I learned in improv.

SL: Does that go into doing crowd work?

CE: Yeah, crowd work has always been really comfortable to me, because [improv] is my background.

SL: After college, you came back to Chicago to do grad school—that’s interesting.

CE: Yes. I was studying social work at the University of Chicago, and I was also taking classes at The Second City, hoping to continue my career in improv. But I quickly fell out of love with improv and into love with stand-up. Within six months of all of that, I dropped out of grad school and stopped doing improv. I was just doing stand-up.

SL: What was your day job while you were doing comedy in Chicago?

CE: I worked at schools, in special education. I also worked as a law clerk for my dad’s law firm. I also was a nanny. So, a bunch of things over a bunch of years.

SL: What is it about stand-up that you like better than improv?

CE: For me, at the time especially, I had just come out not that much prior, so it was really important for me to speak about my experience from my own perspective and speak in the first person. Improv is about characters and about saying yes to the people around you. I just felt like I had my own story to tell.

SL: You do a lot of personal material. Would you say it’s hard to continue doing personal material without feeling like it’s becoming stale? Or do you find it easy to never run out of interesting things to talk about?

CE: Well, I actually think that’s the great thing about stand-up right now, where we’re in this movement of people talking about personal things as opposed to in the past when it was more observational. The thing is if you give yourself the time and space to keep living—and it is hard, because you travel so much—you actually are having experiences that you are constantly re-upping your material. Right? You just write as you live.

SL: At what point during stand-up were you like, “This is what feels right” in terms of your material? When did you feel like you “got good”?

CE: [laughs] I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe—maybe it was just the first time I had done stand-up on television. I was on “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” and it went really well. Jay Leno was one of the guests that night, so he sat and watched me perform. So it was Craig and Jay sitting very, very close to me and watching me do stand-up, and they were very complimentary. They’re two dudes that have been doing this forever, who are really professionals, treating me like I was a comic. I guess part of it was being on TV and realizing that I could do that—I mean, I was already touring at that point, but there’s something about the opportunity to be on television that changes your perspective.

SL: Do you ever get stuck while writing? If so, how do you work through that?

CE: Yeah, absolutely. But I’m a slightly weird animal, because I write most of my stuff onstage—like, I’ll come up with a concept, and then think it out a little bit, and then get onstage and work out the deets. Over a period of a bunch of shows, the joke refines down to what I actually mean to say, and so, yes, there are things that you still work or things that you can’t figure out—that I can’t figure out how to crack story or crack the point that I’m trying to make, but the good news is that there’s always more stage time and there are always more shows.

SL: How long does it take to work out a joke before you’re happy with it—before it’s “done” or as refined as you could possibly make it?

CE: I don’t think it’s ever done. But I’m working on a new hour now, and the last hour that I did was probably refined over [some time]. It’s taken me a year and a half to write my new hour. But a part of that was because I was touring my old hour for six months after releasing an album. So now it’s taken me about a year to write this new thing, then I’ll tape that in December, and hopefully I’ll start writing again.

SL: Do you reuse your old material?

CE: Sometimes I do. If it seems appropriate [at the] moment—if something comes up in the room, or if somebody’s talking about a specific thing in a crowd work situation, and I have a story about that. But generally, because I’m touring so much, I’m trying to make sure the people that saw me last year and this year have new jokes to hear.

SL: What’s your material like for your new tour?

CE: I’m getting married in December, two days after our final show of the tour. I’m marrying Rhea Butcher, a fantastic comic who also happens to be opening for me on this tour. So I’m talking a lot about that and the big changes happening in my life.

SL: What’s it like touring with your fiancee?

CE: Well, it’s stressful and wonderful and [puts] so much pressure on the relationship, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, she’s the best comic that I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. And it’s also wonderful that she’s somebody I really trust in every other way. I never thought I would be marrying another comic—I never thought I’d be on tour with my fiancee—I never thought any of these things, but it makes so much sense, and it’s awesome. So, I recommend it!

Check out Cameron Esposito at Firebird on Nov. 6. Tickets are $15 to $18 ($2 minor surcharge at the door). Doors open at 7:00 p.m., and the show begins at 8:00 p.m.